Dani-Ellie

If any of y'all have Comcast, they're doing a free preview of Cinemax (and HBO but Cinemax is the important one for the purposes of this post), which has Colin's move The Rite available for viewing. I'm watching it right this very moment. :)

Sorry, wrong thread!

Ask and you shall receive. ;)

Maybe it's just me, but I never found Regina's "You eat like a child" to Emma to be as bad as it was made out to be. From the anger I'd seen on Tumblr when the sneak peek was released, I expected it to be some mean-spirited snark fest. When I actually saw it in show, I was all, "But ... this is relatively innocuous." Because 1) it's freakin' true, and find me one fanfic that says otherwise. Grilled cheese and onion rings and hot cocoa with cinnamon indeed. (And there's nothing wrong with that. I have a pretty childlike palate myself. Give me chicken parm or spaghetti and meatballs or mac and cheese and hot dogs, and I'm happy as a pig in shit.) 2) Regina wasn't sniping at Emma when she made the comment, so it came across to me more as "I tease because I love" than something mean-spirited. 3) And this is the most important one -- the joke gets turned back on Regina when she perks up at the prospect of the root beer Emma brought back for them. Who's the one with the childish tastes now, Regina? I don't know, maybe I would have felt differently about it without that B-side, but as it is ... this is the line that launched a thousand angry blog posts?

Eh, I give Charming a pass on the overprotective dad stuff before the date, at least. The poor guy never got the chance to put the fear of God in his daughter's date when she was young enough that it was appropriate. I figure let him have his overprotective dad moment, no matter if it's over a decade too late. (Plus, that whole scene, from proud Mama Snow to overprotective Daddy Charming to best buddy Elsa was freakin' adorable, so I'm disinclined to criticize it much. More of sweet family moments like that, writers, please!)

Is Lennie James still tied up with The Walking Dead? Because that man was badass in Jericho and his natural accent is absolutely lovely.

Re: Bates Motel: I say we start a petition to give Vera Farmiga all the awards. *nods*

It's also entirely possible that the difference between a landline and a cell phone is what was tripping him up. He could very well have understood that the contraption on the desk with the dial/buttons and the cords allows people to communicate but not that this little block of plastic he's supposed to carry around in his pocket with no cords or dials is essentially the same thing. Because really, a landline phone is no different in concept than two tin cans and a string. A cell phone is far more technologically advanced, to the point that it looks like something out of 60s sci-fi.

I used to have this little mini-planetarium contraption that projected the night sky on the ceiling in a dark room. Before I went to sleep at night, I used to like looking at the stars and trying to spot constellations (or even find some of my own ... I was a kid). When Neal said the coconut wasn't a map, I assumed it was something he fashioned for himself along the same idea as the mini-planetarium I had or even the glow-in-the-dark plastic stars kid tack to the ceiling in their bedrooms, since he was a kid when he did it.

Holy fucking shit. Please tell me that Jen has a vast majority of these people blocked by now. WTF?? When the hell did personal boundaries stop being a thing for these people?

Sometimes I wish I could drop some of these people back in the 1800s or early 1900s so they can see what misogyny actually looks like.

See, now, that shit is scary. It may be vague and implied but that is an actual threat against the safety of all the people at the convention.

To be fair, Henry did say that dark savior blood wouldn't have worked to make the ink in Bizarro World. Everything was backwards, so they needed light savior blood. Within the construct of Isaac's story, there is no capital-S Savior. Regina's role in the story is not THE savior, but simply A savior. She did sacrifice her life for Henry's, which makes her Henry's savior. Hook's blood probably would have worked since he became a savior by this definition as well, but then there's the distance to contend with. Why would they go all the way back to where Hook was (if he was even still there ... who knows if Bizarro Snow and Bizarro Charming left the body there or what) when Regina was right in front of them? Henry didn't have the pen until Emma decked Isaac and it fell out of his bag, so it's not like they could have tried it earlier, even if Bizarro Snow hadn't been trying to kill them.

I don't think the adoption was ever the issue. I think the fact that Henry was adopted by the Evil Queen was the issue. I'm sorry, but in my opinion, Regina abused her child. We saw her do things to emotionally hurt him, we saw him tell her how much it hurt him that she made him feel like he was crazy, and she even admitted that she didn't know how to love very well. The first ten years of Henry's life do matter and it's absolutely wonderful that someone adopted Henry rather than Henry languishing in the system but when Regina adopted a child, she took on the responsibility for providing for Henry's physical and emotional well-being. I don't think the fact that Regina's an adoptive mother excuses her from child abuse.

Okay, but here's the thing: Emma now is not the same Emma from season 1. None of the characters are the same people as they were in season 1. And frankly, in my opinion, none of them should be, because we just finished season four. There's no character development if all the characters remain the same throughout the series. Things in Emma's life are vastly different now than they were in season 1. She has parents, a son, friends ... a family. She has a stable, loving support system. She's a lot more open now than she was before, and in my opinion, this is a good thing. Emma the bail bondsperson was of course badass, but Emma the bail bondsperson was also profoundly lonely and deeply unhappy. I adored Emma from the jump, because I wanted so very badly for her to find her happiness. And I still love her now, because she's found it. She has it within in her grasp; now the fight is to keep it. Having that love and that support and that happiness in her life ... it's going to change her. It's going to open her up. It's going to make her blossom. In terms of why Emma would want to be with Hook, I do think it's important to take into consideration that when they first met, Emma pretty much couldn't stand the guy. It's not like she saw him and started fawning all over him. She watched him be a jerk ... and she watched him take the steps to change. Emma is presented as a very forgiving person. She's been shown to offer people second chances. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that she would offer Hook a second chance like she did with Regina, as mentioned above. And I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that she would fall in love with him once he started to change and she liked the person he became. She even said to him, "I like when people find their good hearts along the way."

I don't know, I think expecting that the casual viewer can't follow what the Apprentice told the characters moments before the scene in the street is underestimating the casual viewer a touch. Apprentice: Long before your stories began, the Sorcerer battled the darkness. He was able to keep it from consuming the realms. He tethered it to a human soul that could be controlled with a dagger. Emma even references this in the scene in the street: Emma: The Apprentice told me, we have to do what the Sorcerer did. We have to tether it to a person to contain it. When she steps forward, Regina says there has to be another way, and Emma sadly says there isn't. I think the fact that Emma is sacrificing herself for the good of all is quite clear here.

A friend turned me on to Kay Hooper's Special Crimes Unit series, and I love them to pieces. They're about an FBI unit comprised entirely of psychics, so the cases they investigate are a bit outside the norm (sometimes there's a human perp, sometimes it's a person possessed by a ghost ... that kind of thing). There's usually a little boy-meets-girl action in each one but the romance is only part of the story, which is nice. What I really love about them, though, is that because the series is about the one singular FBI unit, the same characters will show up in each book, with varying degrees of importance to the particular story. Someone might play a tertiary role in one book, for example, and then get his own book later on in the series. One of my favorite characters is a guy named Quentin (I don't even know why he's my favorite, he just is) and I always smile every time he makes an appearance.

From KingOfHearts in the Ratings thread: I disagree. It's not like they had Emma be all, "Screw being the savior, I want to go take a walk on the dark side." She did this because she's the savior. Before following any discussion here or elsewhere, I thought it was quite clear that Emma made this decision as a stopgap. She did it to buy everyone time to find Merlin and figure out a way to destroy the darkness once and for all. She did what Merlin did way back when: tether it to a human soul so it wouldn't lay waste to all the lands. She turned around and told her parents to figure out a way to get the darkness out of her once she did it, and she gave Hook a reason to fight by telling him she loved him. She may have made herself the Dark One but her reason for doing so was heroic in and of itself. She still is the hero for the casual audience to root for, and now they get to root for the darkness to be vanquished.

Replying in the All Seasons thread.

Snow was cured by the single drop of water left in Lake Nostos. Yes, Cora and Hook raised the groundwater to the surface but the lake is still all the way back in the Enchanted Forest, where Regina hasn't been since the Missing Year.

I bet ABC could make a decent bit of bank if they did some creative tie-in merchandising. I would buy the hell out an abridged version of Henry's storybook, for example, or a journal that looks like Rumple's spell book from season two (that thing was freakin' gorgeous).

Exactly. The boss was a jerk. By all means, talk to an employee if his performance is suffering but there's a way to do it that's not as condescending as that guy was. And tearing into his dream while he was at it was just petty. That'd be like my boss calling me into his office to discuss my performance and then telling me I'll never publish a novel because I'm a sucky writer without me having offered my stuff to him for criticism. (And even if I did offer my stuff to my boss for criticism and he thought it sucked, I can guarantee you that he'd be a lot more diplomatic than that.) None of this excuses Isaac's actions, of course. I'm just saying, I think he did have a legitimate beef with that guy that was due to how the guy treated him.

This could very well be my own bias, but I also feel like the show finds its footing when Emma is the focal character. I've loved watching her develop from the closed-off, lonely bailbondsperson into the strong, kickass heroine she is now. I want Emma's happily ever after more than I've ever wanted anything from a television show, and I like that they've shown the steps she's taken, either consciously or unconsciously to achieve it. She now has family, friends, and love (and, dare I hope True Love) and it's been a joy to watch her grow. And I think part of the reason I feel the show is better with her at the center is because regardless of the magic and the growing acceptance of the nuttiness around her, she's still the viewpoint character. She was just a regular person who was thrust into this world that she had no idea existed but it's offered her more than she could have ever dreamed. "Happy endings aren't always what you think they'll be" indeed.

Emma was indeed awesome, and every time I think I can't love the character more or be more impressed with Jen, the next episode happens, haha. One of my favorite little bits was when she was talking to Snow and Charming and trying to get them to remember their true selves. I thought it was obvious that it was killing Emma to see her parents like that and have them not remember her (and bonus heartbreak if she actually has memories of her own mother locking her up in the tower) but when Snow says, "You're right," Emma's mouth turns up in this tiny hopeful smile, which made it all the more gutwrenching when Snow revealed she was only pretending to believe her. I just thought it was such a nice little acting choice.

I'm a huge Emma fan, too. I mean, she is honest to goodness my favorite television character ever. And perhaps this belongs in the Emma thread, but instead of expecting the worst of this storyline, I am excited for it. Because it could very well be amazing. It could very well be what I've wanted for Emma since the start of this show. Not the darkness, not the evil, but the fact that she now has people in her life who are going to be fighting like hell to get her back. I mean, does anyone really think that Snow, Charming, and especially Hook are going to let this stand? If Henry and Regina help in the fight, that could be wonderful, too. After four full seasons of Emma saving everyone else, I am so very ready to see everyone else return the favor. To me, Emma made this sacrifice with the full expectation that it will not be permanent. She told her parents to figure out a way to get the darkness out of her because they'd done it once before. She told Hook she loved him. She gave them hope. She placed her life in their hands. She put her trust in them. She said without saying, "You three can save me. I know you will save me." That's such a huge step in Emma's development, and I feel like that's been overlooked in the cloud of negativity. And maybe when it airs come September, I will hate it and maybe I'll wish it had been done differently. But I won't know that until it airs.